Transcript

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>> I think I wanted to hear it out.>> Donald Trump Jr. defending himself on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. A hospitable forum for the US President's son after his explosive email release threw the Trump Russia probe into high gear.>> In retrospective, I probably would have done things a little differently.

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For me, this was opposition research.>> Don Jr. revealing little else about the emails or his meeting with a Russian lawyer. Other than insisting the latter was a quote wasted 20 minutes. The tweeted exchange showing he was to receive incriminating information from the lawyer about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign that was part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.

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Don Jr. responding, if it's what you say, I love it.>> This is something as most problematic thing I've seen thus far.>> This is moving into perjury, false statements and even into potentially treason.>> CNN reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller will examine the whole exchange in his probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

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Were Trump Jr's actions illegal? Reuters legal correspondent Jan Wolf.>> There could be a finding that Donald Trump, Jr's conduct violated campaign finance laws. Such a finding would probably come from the investigation being conducted by Robert Mueller. The campaign finance law prohibits the solicitation of something of value from a foreign national.

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Political opposition research according to some legal experts is thing very much of value. It's a commodity that politicians pay for. There is no crime called collusion, but collusion is really just another word for conspiracy. And conspiracy is obviously a crime. Conspiring to commit any sort of crime is an unlawful act in and of itself.

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>> Trump Junior's disclosure could now entangle a wider web of Trump officials who also attended the meeting.>> If any point meetings were left off disclosure forms during the course of government background checks before coming into office Oor if misleading statements were made to investigators by the members of the Trump campaign, that could arguably also give rise to criminal liability because it's a crime to make false statements to the government.

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>> President Trump, who has called the Russia investigation fake new, a hoax and a witch hunt tweeting Wednesday, My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!